By Logan Williams, Warrior Editorial Fellow
The F/A-18 E/F “Super Hornet” has been a mainstay of the naval aviation fleet for several decades, it is the U.S. military’s carrier-enabled, fourth-generation fighter jet — think the U.S. Navy’s version of the ubiquitous F-16 fighter jet platform.
The F/A-18 E/F is receiving a new array of upgrades, much as the F-16 did, through the F-16’s Service Life Extension Program.
The F/A-18 E/F’s upgrades will allow the United States to continue fielding the aircraft for a decade or more, by extending the maximum flight time from 6,000 hours to 10,000 hours.
Additionally, these Super Hornets will undergo a technological transformation, which is meant to prepare them to fight a 21st-century war. The airframe will receive a large touchscreen interface in place of older gauges, which gives the pilots the ability to alter the display at will, with ease and for comfort, every time they jump into the cockpit.
The Super Hornet platform will receive an upgraded Distributed Targeting Processor-Networked (DPT-N) mission computer, which can process data approximately 17-times faster than previous mission computers, and which enables the F/A-18 E/F to demonstrate an early form of moderate sensor/data-fusion, although not equal to the serious sensor/data-fusion and other technological capabilities of the fifth-generation F-35 Lighting.
The Super Hornet was also given upgraded Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT), which enables interconnectivity between the aircraft and other network-enabled weapons in the United States’ arsenal. The TTNT enables fighter jets to communicate targeting data and data about the combat environment, with each other in a discrete, closed network — and with other weapons on the ground or in the water (e.g. destroyers and aircraft carriers). This turns each F/A-18 E/F into an intelligence gathering and reconnaissance weapon and it allows each aircraft to act as a network node (for an example of a network node, think your home’s WI-FI router, which both receives information from your home computer, and communicates information back to the computer).
This TTNT is what has enabled the F/A-18 E/F to transform into a drone command center, as the fighter jet pilot communicates with multiple drones at once, commanding a collection of unmanned wing-men — this exercise has only been completed in training, but obviously, its applicability to the inevitable war with China is profound.
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Perhaps the most important technical upgrade that the F/A-18 E/F has received is the newly introduced Infrared Search & Track (IRST) “anti-stealth” capability. This IRST device searches for enemy aircraft based upon its distinct heat signature, rather than using radar, which means that it can find and track stealth aircraft from potentially over several hundred miles away. It is interesting that this capability used to exist on the F-14 Tomcat, but was deemed unnecessary after the Soviet Union’s collapse, as the United States moved towards asymmetric warfare against states and terrorists with no real air capabilities. The reintroduction of this capability is a not-so-subtle statement that the United States is ready for war with China, whenever and wherever it shall come. It is also worth noting that it is virtually impossible to mask or reduce a fighter jet’s heat signature, so it is unlikely that China will be able to introduce new technology to thwart the United States’ IRST capability anytime soon.
Finally, the upgraded Super Hornet is receiving a marginal increase in stealth capabilities through the application of a coat of radar absorbing material (RAM) — which can reduce the aircraft’s radar cross-section by approximately 10-percent. The F/A-18 E/F will never be a true low observability (stealth) fighter, but this RAM will likely increase the aircraft’s survivability, and give the pilot a few seconds longer of unobserved approach in a match-up with a Chinese fighter — and second are all the pilot needs to turn his enemies to dust.
While the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet is not – and could never be – a replacement for a genuine fifth-generation fighter jet, this aircraft’s ability to take-off and land on one of the United States’ aircraft carriers enabled the U.S. Navy to amass superior, high-tech air-power in preparation for a fight within the enemy’s airspace. This program will ready the Super Hornet to take on the Chinese J-20 and anything else that is thrown its way.
Logan Williams currently studies at the University of Connecticut. He is an International Affairs Researcher; Work Published in Newspapers, Magazines, and Journals, Such As: Geopolitics Magazine, Modern Diplomacy, Tufts University’s The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Democracy Paradox, Diario Las Américas, International Affairs Forum, Fair Observer, History Is Now Magazine, UNC at Chapel Hill’s American Diplomacy, The Center for Military Modernization’s Warrior Maven Magazine,
